Meet Sen.Portman, the tidy Un-Trump

When Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman stepped up to the  podium at  the
Akron Press Club luncheon, the well-behaved partisan audience got a closeup of the prototypical Un-Trump.

Casual open collar, lean,  unthreatening, a sweep of gray  hair  betraying his boyish manner, a regular guy - all of it Un-Trump evidence of his selfie as a "Common Sense Conservative".

As it happened, even his  speech as the candidate for reelection against former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland followed the  safest route, narrowly content  to tell us what everyone in the room already knew:  Good grief.  There's a  drug crises in the land. 

It wasn't until some  questions from the audience led him  down the unscripted off-ramp that we heard, if only  briefly,  that he wants to delay the nomination of Merrick Garland - a  highly qualified jurist, says Portman  - because  it would be "better for the country". Better than what?  His practiced imprecision can throw the unsuspecting.

There's more to fill out the image, unspoken.  Un-Trump Portman is still the same guy who voted to defund Planned Parenthood.  Vigorous pro-life supporter. Opponent of protection  of ocean, coastal and Great Lakes ecosystems.  Climate denier.  Insists on repealing ObamaCare and replacing it with  something or other.

Don't get me started on the Common Sense Conservative who had tagged along with Mitt Romney throughout swing-state Ohio leading the political gurus to assume that he was in line for the vice presidency.

There are times when it would be fair to say that,as I occasionally read on my computer,    his message has no content.

That's an Un-Trump for you.

His Press Club audience  seemed unmoved by his speech, offering no more than muted applause at the end.

For once I could agree with that particular group.

Yippee

It's back!!! With plenty of urging and skill by son and friend.

Campaign 2016: Bleating and tweeting on the right

You may have noticed that there's been a lot of nasty  pushing snd shoving by Republican candidates who want not only to make America great but also to satisfy the  hitherto ignored hearts and souls of civilized human beings.

That should be clearly evident in the bloody crossfire of people like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz who have settled on the word "liar"  to defend one from the other.  John Kasich has sought shelter in pretending to be a moderate right up to the split-second that he came down ferociously conservative on abortion, Planned Parenthood, Obamacare, the auto industry  bailout,  the  stimulus  and public unions. but unlike Cruz, he never resorted to calling Trump a "sniveling coward".(Cruz also was widely quoted as saying"Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him."  I dare not go further  with this because I have no idea what the hell he's talking about.")

Name-calling isn't  anything new to politics.  It just gets wider currency in the  era of  bleating tweeting social media and antisocial patriots who want everyone else to atone for the LGBT's  who are threatening our religious  liberties.

No one has experienced  the mobocracy's assault more than President Obama , who was even shouted  a  liar  by a South Carolina representative  as Obama spoke to a seated Congress. The prez has been on  the receiving end of  Socialist, Communist, traitor, Kenyan, monkey and Watermelon Boy from the grandstanders

But in an historical context  of badly seeded narrative, Spiro Agnew's words will live in notoriety for his remark that the American media were nothing more than "nattering nabobs of negativism" - a term fed to him by wordsmith William Safire that was less effective for its lack of reach to  the minds all those who  couldn't fathom its meaning. .

And of course, we lived with "Tricky Dick" Nixon  for ages.  Still,  my  choice for graphic malcontent must go to Tom Dewey as he was asked how he could have possibly lost to Harry Truman.   Without pause, the Republican asserted: "The son of a bitch won."

As for Kasich, the Secret Service's code name for him is "Unit 1"  because as he once confided,  "My wife said , "You'll never be Unit 1.  You're  Unit 2."

It's still March and we can only hope that his code won't improve before the calamity on the horizon at the Cleveland convention..  And that's no lie.


(Reposted from Plunderbund) 

UA: The Polytechnic (?) Empire misfires back

In the midst of further evidence of the University of Akron's woes,  the Akron Beacon Journal not only again called this week for a change in leadership but also dumped the school's critics (like me)  into a class that it described as  "unfair, misinformed and small-minded at times".

Right.  I can only presume it refers to this writer and the thousand or so folks who signed a "Scarborough must go" ad in the aforementioned newspaper.   In assessing the misbehavior of  those of us who have long sensed a meltdown at the downtown campus, the editorial deans should be reminded of their headline  that once asserted Team Scarborough "has a good plan...It really does."

The "really"  part  suggested a plea for approval  from any doubters who remain in our midst.

Having  unfairly sprung that from my system, may I continue?

In the simplest terms for this week's installments of the UA Epic of Biblical Proportions,  here's the narrative.  It really is.

(1) A few days ago veteran reporter Marilyn Miller wrote  a firm  facts-and-figures  front page story telling us of a continuing decline in the school's enrollment. Headline: Enrollment slide is largest in MAC....

(2) Next day, on Thursday, the UA front office emailed the paper, shredding Miller's story as"inaccurate, misleading  and apparently relied on out-of-date information".

(3) On Friday, UA gave the paper later information.

(4) Miller then followed Saturday with  another front-pager that was headlined:
 "UA takes exception to article on future freshmen".

The school came up with new numbers in a vain attempt at triage:

The paper reported the new level was  actually worse than first reported! New student enrollment was at the lowest number  in five years.  Are you as confused as I am? Did tail bite tail?

Never mind, UA said.  It issued  good news through its own filters that called Team Scarborough's "pretty extensive efforts"  on track with recruiting initiatives ranging from social media activities  and letter-writing to one- on- one phone calls to student prospects by Scarborough himself.

Well, to be fair about it, he didn't create the existing problem when he whizzed onto the campus two years ago.  His mismanaged agenda merely made them worse, as he  moved quickly  with ideas that drained millions from the ailing budget for inner circle salaries,  new programs of "student success coaches"   provided by a start-up company with little experience, a new student Cadet Corps amid a couple of hundred layoffs,  and God knows what else is in the fine print. Oh, a nearly $1 million renovation of  the president's
 home that accommodated a suite for his wife's parents. (No, I won't revive the memory of the damned olive jar!)  For a president who often shares his reliance on his  Christian values,  this all sounded a lot like the Prosperity Gospel, right?

When confronted with these not so small matters, Scarborough has said his critics simply don't understand what he is trying to accomplish...That would include the 50-2 no confidence resolution by the Faculty Senate and the local paper's rising impatience from an earlier berth on the Good Ship Lollipop.

And  if he doesn't respond to his many critics, it's because he doesn't understand their idea of vibrant leadership two chaotic years into his calling.

 Time to go, President Scarborough - as the bumper stickers advise  - and  don't take the school with you.

As you yourself once said to a local religious group:

"What  matters most is what we learn from our  failures and how those lessons make us better. I believe  moments of failure are when we are most receptive to actually hearing what God has been trying to say."

And while you're listening, sir, invite your enablers  at the Board of  Trustees to listen with you.

Well?  So much for today's...um... unfair misinformed sermon.

The computer nightmare is over - I hope

Well, I'm back.  No thanks to Apple or Google. Neither was useful after hours and hours on the phone in  trying to solve my blog block on Google.

That was remedied by Son Rick's friend Tim, who  arrived as I was seconds away from a nervous breakdown , pushed some buttons and Bingo!, it worked in less than 3 minutes.

 

It was a learning experience.  Never answer the phone, nor follow up on advisories from distant voices, in solving these problems.  Never. Never. Never!!!!!  Why was I too dense to know that?  The cloud cleared when some outlier with a hard-to- understand voice told me the computer was infected with something called "Bubblehead"  or something  that had intruded upon my way of life . Huh?

The bigger question for me  by now was how would I fill the empty hours that were usually infused with blogging for 8 years.  How could I make amends with the darkened screen that had mirrored my thoughts above all others, including the useless stuff.   How could I ever again determine how many times Dino Restelli had struck out on a 2-2 count with  a runner in scoring position and his team behind by  15 runs in the bottom of the ninth.   Or how many times John Kasich has told us that his father was a mailman.?

You grow listless.  You spend more time on the New York Times Sunday crossword with your mind out of sorts. .  You are a prisoner.  Your ideas for possible columns with no place to put them   are overlaid  on 12 across or 10 down.     You recall a Smith-Corona typewriter that you bought at a PX when you were in the Air Force.  It always did what you wanted it to do and could be carried on a plane. You could even make instant copies with carbon paper. even if your fingertips turned ink blue.

  Whatever happened to the good ol'  days?  When I wanted so send an article to the Washington Post or one of several magazines that I had occasion to write for, I merely  folded t he paper,  fit it into a big envelope and MAILED it.

Enough of this gibberish. As I began this report I told you it was a learning experience. I can only hope it lasts. And that Tim continues to be available.


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Stevens: GOP needs more than white voters to win

In his column in the Daily Beast, former Romney campaign manager Stuart Stevens laid out the Republican Party's decline in the clearest math that anyone -  maybe even Sarah Palin or Joe the Plumber - can understand.

The column heading said  it all:

 "There Aren't Enough White Voters for GOP Win".

Stevens' logic isn't hard to follow once he does the math. "Over the last six presidential elections,"  he writes, "Democrats  have won  16 states every time for a  total of 242 electoral votes out of the 279 needed to win.  In those same six elections,
Republican presidential candidates  carried 13 states for 103 electoral votes. Here's another way to look at it.  The last time a Republican presidential candidate won with enough votes to be declared the winner on election night was in 1988 [George H.W. Bush]"

The clincher?  Stevens argues that although it's erroneously believed that a smaller percentage of white voters supported Romney than Ronald Reagan. the opposite was true.   Romney lost  because the white voter pool  had shrunk.

 And will continue to shrink!

He  concludes that it's a myth to believe a great mass of white voters are lying back to vote when  the right Republican candidate eventually arrives.

"Call  it the Lost Tribes of the Amazon Theory: If only you paddle far enough up the river, and bang the  drum loud enough, these previously hidden voters will gather to the river's edge, " he writes.  "The simple  truth is that there simply aren't enough white voters in the America of 2016 to win a national  election without getting a substantial share of the non-white votes."

Republicans,  he says, need between 25 pct. and 35 pct.  of the non-white vote to win.

 But the party still has its sacred but less potent base, of sorts.

Anybody for demographics?

Vigilance

Don't count on grown-ups in the wings

Political campaigns  are never without a fresh supply of jargon, from Yellow Dogs, boll weevils  and angry white guys, to gravitas, NASCAR dads and a soccer mom from somewhere up north. We need an artificial way to extract one pol from another to keep everybody casually informed of who's who.  

Now, we're being introduced to the phenomenon of "grown- ups". It's a common word that has taken on new meaning  in the helter-skelter of the 2016 campaign.   As the Plain Dealer chipped in with its endorsement of John  Kasich:  "Alone among Republicans Kasich acts like a grown-up". I only agree with the acting part.

 It's  his good fortune to be in a room of maniacs.  As it's been said, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.   More about that in a future column.

But  with a shattered Republican party, it may be the only household word that will serve as an ad hoc standard in the planet's  frantic  search for an Ohio Miracle, which is what Kasich has long promised for years.

Good luck on that. You can't count on clarity from, say,  MSNBC's Chris Matthews, a dam-bursting  Kasich  fan who speedily expresses himself without punctuation marks.  The Ohio governor, after all,   outlasted  Marco Rubio , once considered a grown-up, who quit with a self-awarded consolation prize that  he finished fourth in a field of seventeen.

The TV news class - so-called strategists, bellowers and assortment of insiders -   has come at us with Donald Trump's Castro-like segments of his  babbling but  has now settled on Kasich as the "grown-up"   in an anybody-but-Trump  movement.  You'd think that after  ignoring Trump's earlier  rise for so long they would now  have a plausible  solution in the GOP's afterlife.  But as the sign says in the antique shop:  You break it, you own it.

You will  be hearing a lot of talk from the muses of  fill-in grown-ups   all of the way to the convention. Even Kasich will try to confirm that he's the miracle-working deity.   Some of us, however, would do well to watch the cartoons instead.

Good grief.

A day that once had walls

This being St. Patrick's Day, it's a good time to remind ourselves it's also a day when some noisemakers want to build walls.

The Irish of more than a century ago encountered the same walls in America, a traditional enterprise over the years that would exclude blacks, Jews,  Catholics, Italians, Muslims, Germans, Japanese, Asians and Middle Easterners, depending on the prevailing prejudicial winds.  Which one is in your family tree?

The GOP Bottom feeders are in full voice

Since the earliest moments when Barack Obama  - he of the darker skin - entered the Oval Office, the bottom feeders of the Republican Party have denied that he was elected by The People.  Nearly  two terms later, they're still at it with Sen.  Mitch McConnell providing the hapless  face of his political class.

Never has that been more evident than their hollowed-out  opposition to a replacement in the President's  final year in office.  The orchestrated  off-key reaction to Obama's  nomination of Merrick Garland to  the U.S. Supreme Court  the morning after Tuesday's round of primaries revived the notion that Obama somehow mythically botched the U.S Constitution by stealing into the office when the voters weren't looking.

With McConnell leading the choir, his senators chanted that the next court appointment should come from The People,. a majority of whom have already spoken  in favor of appointment this year. In his own humorless way, the Senate leader continues to be staring at the shadowy walls of Plato's cave.

Crouching forward as the Republican National Committee Chairman, Reince Priebus mumbled that Obama was doing a "disservice" to the voters by trying to upstage the next president.  Priebus, who seldom makes sense in his responses to easy questions,  accused Obama of attempting to "tip  the balance of the court with a liberal justice in the eleventh hour of his presidency" .

And Ohio Sen . Rob Portman, who insists he's a "commonsense " conservative,  opposed an appointment his year - a year in which his own job will be severely tested by former Ohio Democratic Gov.  Ted Strickland.  "I believe the best thing for the country is to trust the American people and allow them to weigh in on the issue".  "Weighing in",   of course, is something Portman, whose greatest strength is  piloting the Koch brothers ship in Ohio,  is rarely inclined  to do.

Folks, these bottom feeders are not only intellectually corrupt but rather just plain politically stupid.  And they wonder how Donald Trump has gotten this far!

A tale of two campuses

While a top University of Akron officer was explaining  how the school was desperately trying to reverse its enrollment losses with initiatives short of a national military draft, rival Kent State University boasted  of continued growth.

KSU's latest numbers in the Beacon Journal reported a record high of  3,045 new enrollees for the spring semester, numbers that have grown for seven consecutive years.  Total population for the school's  seven regional campuses in 2015 was 41,005. The school  attributed some  of the good news to an increase in international students.

Meantime, Crain's Cleveland Business carried a less  positive picture  by Lawrence Burns, UA vice president of advancement,  that set out several channels for the school's efforts to recruit students - including having some of them urge their off-campus friends so set foot in a Zippy classroom.  The whole tone of the Burns article seemed to say,  "We're doing the best we can, folks".

Crain's article noted UA's enrollment  was down 600 from March a year ago.

One factor in the decline, Burns said, could be negative media reports from faculty, contributors, alums   and others  while  the campus turmoil  has grown since the arrival on campus of President Scott Scarborough in June 2014.

What Team Scarborough has yet to acknowledge is that  you can't  fix UA's image problems with feel-good public relations, trustee silence, nor students asking their friends to join as if it were a fraternity or sorority.

Can spring be far behind?

A Grumpy list for Sesame street fans

After several days of riotous  politicking before Tuesday's critical (it says here) polling and primaries,  here's the diary for those who wisely were glued to  Sesame Street instead:

Donald Trump blamed Bernie Sanders for attracting ISIS rowdies  and called John Kasich a "baby".  Marco Rubio blamed President Obama for the Bay of Pigs and Cleveland Browns.   Ted Cruz blamed Hillary for not acting like a God-fearing woman. Kasich,   reaching for the heavens more often these days, blamed Hillary for "gall".  Sanders and Clinton blamed Trump for everything else.

And then it got worse.

Kasich claimed he balanced the budgets in Latvia and Uganda.  He upgraded his father's job from  mailman to postmaster general for  the entire European Community.   He told George Stephanopoulos that he would support Trump if the blowhard were the Republican nominee but would  not  "wallow in the mud" with him.  To emphasize his point, he rejected an invitation to inspect polluted Lake Erie beaches.
(It was another pet example of Kasich's 3D responses to questions that make him uncomfortable - deflecting, dithering and departing.)

Closer to home,  Secretary of State Jon Husted announced new voting rules to eliminate fraud at the polls:  Only voters with blue eyes would be given ballots. Before adjourning for Labor Day vacations in January, the hoofbeating legislature enacted a law that would provide Statehouse hitching posts for their horses.

The University of Akron Board of Trustees, meeting at Camp David to avoid protesters, called for a recount of the Faculty Senate's 50-2 no confidence resolution against President Scott Scarborough.  Finally, students who were spotted booing  Scarborough at UA  basketball games were warned that all future  sports events would be privatized.

You're welcome!

Kasich: Quid pro quo, are you kidding me?

Aside to Marco Rubio:  Sorry that you didn't earn  a quid pro quo when you asked Gov. Kasich to return your  favor of urging Ohioans  to vote for Kasich to stop Donald Trump.   In his demonic bid to fill in an inside straight at the poker table,  the Ohioan  rejected a plea from Rubio's forces to do the same in the Florida senator's  home state.

Kasich's response:  "If I've got supporters somewhere the country, and I'm on the ballot, they kind of ought  to vote for me.  I mean, what kind of deal would it be if  I told my people, don't vote for me?" .

Marco, the governor has been boastfully telling people to pay attention to how we do things in Ohio. I "kind of ought "  to believe that you understood whatever it was the blue collar candidate  was trying to say.  

Next: anti-Scarborough bumper stickers !

You soon will be  seeing these bumper stickers distributed by the group seeking the ouster of  University of Akron President Scott Scarborough. Activist Jane Bond, former UA trustee and Common Pleas Judge, says 1,000 stickers will be s distributed along with wrist bands calling  for his departure  from the deeply troubled campus.  You can wonder how Team Scarborough can hold out in such a hostile atmosphere peopled by the faculty, whose senate cast a 50-2 no confidence resolution, students and townspeople.  .

Got that, trustees?   Long after this mess is cleaned up,  historians will write about UA's decline and mention the names of the enabling trustees who have not only risked the school's future but their own reputations for letting it happen.

The Obama file, with humor

Best line of the week:

When President Obama welcomed young  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the White House, he slipped in a quip about Sen. Ted Cruz, asking:

"Where else could a boy born in Calgary grow up to run for president of the United States?"

Ohio papers lay out welcome mat for Kasich

It's been a terrible year for mainstream establishment newspapers. They  have faced endorsement options of death by   hanging or  by firing squad (Trump, Cruz) or by a happy wanderer (Kasich)  who  is the son of a mailman who has been trying to part the waters with his vision of the Pearly Gates.

So with  Tuesday's Ohio primaries approaching,  the Beacon Journal and Plain
Dealer (as well as a majority of the other Buckeye papers) urged Republican voters to support Gov. Kasich  with hospitable home state praise while ignoring many of his  warts.

I know.  They will argue that they had little choice, which, in this instance ignored the option of endorsing nobody.  The PD editorial writers  described their man as "an experienced leader who understands the art of compromise"  and a "compassionate conservative".

 Not really. Particularly for things  that matter the most to women,  gays, Planned Parenthood, schools, urban  budgets and climate change. Etc.

The BJ was a tad testier.

Although  conceding that  the  governor's hyper-self serving vision of his state "departs in many ways from  reality,"  it credits him with being "more the problem solver"   and concludes that he would be the "best candidate now in the mix to emerge  in July at the national party convention".

Aside from his squishy attitude toward climate change, moving back and forth on the topic, there's also his absurd views on public education.  He has said that since Ohio's charter schools, which are among the worst in the nation,  have worked so well, we might consider "charter  universities".

Please.  The University of Akron already has more problems than it is willing to admit.

Now I ask: Should "no endorsement" be an option rather than trying to create something from nothing?

Happy-go-lucky Dr. Pangloss on Tuesday's ballot

In all of my many years of shadowing politicians, I haven't witnessed a candidate who has yet to win a primary but breaks out in a manic victory lap after finishing third in the latest.

That describes Gov. Kasich's  latest toast to himself for his bronze medal performance in Michigan behind Donald Trump and Ted  Cruz.  It was, he gleamed, a new day for his candidacy as he found more reason to congratulate himself for his persistence in hanging around in a shrinking field of terrible rivals.

Voltaire created a character named Dr. Pangloss who found a happy ending in everything, literally jumping off each of Candide's pages with exuberant optimism. Kasich has simplified  his merry political style by telling us that a victory in his home state of Ohio next Tuesday - sort of like the thrill of kissing your sibling - will lead him to the Oval Office.   Pause while I catch my breath.

* * *

Does the National Republican Senatorial Committee have kids working for it today?   I mean, how in the unholy world of loony attack politics could the NRSC tweet that Rep Tammy Duckworth, a double amputee whose legs were blown off as a helicopter pilot in Iraq,  was "not standing up for veterans"?

When the NRSC later conceded that it was an unfortunate   choice of words, it removed the tweet.  In a twitter world, too late.

* *  *
Speaking of awful words,    Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn warned that no matter who President Obama would nominate to the Supreme Court (he didn't know)  the nominee would be treated as  a "piñata".  Are references to piñata  the new Republican norm for the selection of Supremes?   Or are they simply trying to impress Hispanics that Republicans  know a few Hispanic words?

Who is the GOP's establishment?.

There are growing reports that the Republican "ex-tablishment", more broadly known as the lumbering Big E Establishment, has finally gotten the memo that Donald Trump is an existential threat to the GOP.  It is reacting by belatedly taking an interest in the party's fate  and  is putting  $10 million into a "Stop Trump"   movement in key primary states. The panicky rationale is that if Trump  can be denied  enough delegates to put him over the top,  Sir Galahad might emerge from the Cleveland convention in July. Or Mitt Romney, who is not a threat to any established order. .

I'm never sure who the establishment is.   The word normally  sends brain waves  of  anonymous business and hedge-fund geniuses sitting around their Chivas Regal, comfortably elitist on   leathery sofas at the club and burying themselves in the Wall Street Street Journal.

As such,  they isolate themselves from people who shop at Walmart  and pump their own gas.Thank God they don't have to.

But then Gov. Kasich insists that he's not a member of the establishment - clearly a campaign ploy to enhance his current posture that he's not an angry white guy and  loves everybody because the Bible tells him so.

But that becomes a problem for someone like him who has courted such non-Walmart shoppers as casino king Sheldon Adelson (Upon meeting him in Vegas, , Kasich called upon God to bless the billionaire  for doing so much good)  and the super-rich Koch Brothers, who had been friendly to Wisconsin Gov. Scott  Walker before he dropped out of the presidential race early in the preliminaries.

So can you not be part of the establishment even if you are asking the big financiers to  chip in a couple of million for  your campaign?

I don't pretend to know how this will all end.    A clear Trump delegate victory with no further references to penis size?    A brokered convention  with the police overwhelmed by protesters in the streets?  A convention chant of "We want Willkie"?  The awarding of the remaining vacancy seat on the stage to Joe the Plumber?   Sarah Palin giving the nominating speech for Trump?

Will Kasich deny that he said he would support Trump in full view of a national TV audience?

As you can see,  it will take more than $10 million to restore order to the ex-tablishment's old Republican party.

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The British magazine running scared

Think our allies aren't getting nervous?

Schlafly: time to take ball and glove from amigos

Phyllis Schlafly, a rigbt-wing writer who has been tormenting Democracy  for more than a half-century, has offered a plan that goes well beyond Donald Trump's promised wall to keep out illegal aliens.  With the ragged arguments so common from  her class, she wants to force all Major League baseball teams to use only  American-born players.

Holy Roberto Clemente!  She said what?

Yep, ALL foreign players, illegal or not.

"The best baseball players today," she argues,  "are American -born." And they are taking jobs away from  American athletes. .

So much for Albert Pujols,(Dominican),  a three-time National League MVP, or such superstars as Rod Carew(Panamanian), Tony Oliva (Cuban) and Juan Marichal (a 243 game-winning pitcher  from the Dominican Republic)

Not good enough to dissuade Schlafly from being a fool  in print.   As she says: "Some of these players cannot speak  English and they did not rise through the  ranks of Little League."

She should have been kinder to herself  by expressing herself in ancient Urdu dialect explaining the infield fly rule.

P.S.About the wall we've been hearing so much about from some Republican  candidates.  Might not it be worth a try to replace the scheme with a thousand border collies?

Hooray. Kasich back to inner self

The good news is that change. is possible in politics. But the bad news is that Gov. Kasich    returned to his nasty inner Kasich from Happyville in  an attack on Hillary Clinton for saying Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder should resign or be recalled for his squishy t role in the Flint water scandal.  Kasich huffed that her  words were the " definition of gall".

Which reminds me: the  Ohio governor and tour  guide these past several months has now qualified for the coveted  Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award for defending the character of his fellow Republican governor who dithered  while countless  constituents drank sickening water,   as did many in Sebring , Ohio

UA by Munch

The state of the University

An attempt at triage at UA

Well, the next chapter in the Perils of Polytechnic  unfolded this week with the University of Akron's decision to turn to a medical doctor in its house to remedy  the school's communications disaster (among others!).

He's David Gordon, who will continue as dean of the College of Health Professions,while being  on call to put Team  Scarborough and the faculty on speaking terms, sort of.   Although Gordon was described to me as  a likable, outgoing guy, UA's  problems have festered  much too long for triage. All previous attempts at damage control to the school's image have failed.  Besides, the granite wall called the Board of Trustees has shown no inclination in the deathly silence to abandon President Scott Scarborough in his tenure of discontent. After all, it's the same board that anointed  him.

More than once, I've had to wonder how  these adults in the board room brought him to the campus in the first place.  The trustees' connecting tissue to  him remains a secret after they enriched him with a sweetheart contract in mid-2014 that included a new suite of rooms for his in-laws in the president's mansion and guaranteed free education for a daughter  at any campus in Ohio when she reaches that point.

The deal was even more numbing as he brought in  cronies from his  provost's job at  Toledo University, then contracted for $840,000 an inexperienced startup outfit called Trust Navigator to "coach" students  and engage in discussions with a distance learning  company up to its mahogany desktops in legal trouble.

The Faculty Senate's response was a 50-2 vote of no confidence against Scarborough.

What is so troubling  for anyone who cares:  Why does a guy like Scarborough, so blessedly treated by the board,  need a small group of business community advisors and now a  volunteer liaison to show him how to do his half-million dollar job?

Scarborough arrived with a pat plan to rebrand the university.  The board can advance that idea by beginning at the top rather than rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

How true!

From the New Yorker.

Much to link Trump and Kasich

Here they come!  The riderless cavalry puffing across the political landscape to rescue the besieged Republican Establishment from the deathly grip of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

But even, as it now appears,  they mainly want to stop a vulgar Donald  Trump, have they given too little thought to the other  three?  Have you heard Cruz and and Rubio?  Oh, and John Kasich, the alleged moderate who has been presenting himself, as have another pol or two, as the only adult in the room?

And what would the electorate gain from him?  On most critical issues, there's not a dime's worth of difference between the Blue Collar Ohioan - and the worldly billionaire, to wit:

 Obamacare, Iran nuclear deal , delays on Scalia successor, women, boots on the ground and bombers in the air against ISIS and  narcissistic self-approval  for having answers to every problem in the Universe .  (When Kasich doesn't want to answer a thorny question, he simply walks away from the media;  Trump has critics ushered from the hall).

Back in his  own state there's more about Kasich.  Do moderates attack Planned Parenthood, public unions,  cutbacks on funds to cities and schools to balance a budget that the Constitution requires him to do anyway?

Let me tell you about the state of public education on Kasich's watch.  It will sound like a boast but I must mention it to illustrate his standing with public  school teachers.  When I wrote a recent column on the Washington Post giving education an F grade in Ohio it drew more than 6,000 reader recommendations on Plunderbund.  I was as startled as anybody, but it was explained to me that it reflected "how much the teachers hate Kasich in this state".

Oh, police and firefighter's  have produced a video recalling how Kasich called a cop an "idiot" after a traffic stop.

In anther instance of bravado, he brusquely warned that anybody who tried to challenge his policies  would be run over by the bus.  That was before central-casting experts reinvented him  in the  presidential campaign  as a Sesame Street good guy with a soft smile and a Bible with the Lord at his back.

If he shows any claim beyond his own to winning the GOP nomination, it's certain you'll be hearing more about these things from his rivals.  Moderate, hell!

Oops. State orders UA to repay $4.1 million to students

What are we to think of the disclosure that the state has ordered the University of
Akron to refund to students $4.1 million in  unwarranted fees?

 Was it human error.?  Was it a case of haste making waste in addressing a $60 million deficit?  Or, based  on the track record of the Scarborough regime,  was it another instance of rank mismanagement that has dogged the University since the leadership changed hands  in June 2014?

The foul-up grew out of UA's increase from $18.55 per credit hour to $28.50 as facilities fees in its effort to trim the deficit.   However, state officials ruled that facilities fees qualified as general fees,  and thus violated  a state tuition freeze.

Jeff Robinson , a spokesman  for the Ohio Department of Education, was quoted on Ohio.com  (where you will find more details) , as saying  that he knew of no other public university "facing the same issue this year".

We hope that will find a spot in Scott Scarborough's resume if the  Board  of Trustees finally decides not be silently embarrassed much longer.

Christie's ugly farewell

Did you happen tot see Chris Christie's sullen expression as he stepped aside for Donald Trump's triumphant paean to himself as the Super Tuesday winner?  It was the face of a fallen star.  Having endorsed Trump, he was finished.

The conservative New Hampshire Union Leader had already withdrawn  its endorsement of the New Jersey governor,  saying it had grievously erred.  Six Gannett newspapers in his home state called for him to resign or otherwise be recalled.

Christie made everything worse in his introduction of Trump by saying the guy was uniting the nation, honest! Given the excess of political oratory, Christie still topped the field  of make-believers.  For a contentious, sassy  guy known for taking no prisoners, he had impressed the media,which is always scavenging for rising stars,  as a solid straight-talking politician with plenty of popular appeal.

Last night, however, he had the look of an abject  politician whose entire stock had crashed.

Good riddance.


.

A second by second report to polls closing.  What won't they think of next?

Another searing letter from Scarborough critics

The op-ed letter in the Beacon Journal Beacon on Sunday  revealed no signs  that the resistance to UA President Scott Scarborough is weakening .  It bore the names of 15 of the top tier  faculty, each having been recognized for distinction for their academic achievements .  And it was a  dark accounting  of how things have gone so terribly wrong under  Scarborough with the consent of the Board of Trustees that hired him. .

The group had asked the Board for a meeting to discuss the concerns that later led to a no confidence resolution in his imperialistic and incompetent management. But  adhering to its Code of Silence, the board ignored the request. Meantime, the negatives have drawn national  interest.

( You can read the entire letter online on Ohio.com)

We can only ask the trustees how much longer they will permit Scarborough  to run the school in a hostile environment that will impact the trustees when they walk off the campus.  Surely they must have some concerns about their own reputations that will suffer from the ongoing decline of the school.

* * *

UPDATE:  Following my earlier column referring to an unnamed source who twice described Scarborough as "toast" he emailed me to contend that he may have misled me. Inasmuch as he contacted another blogger   and signed it with his name for anybody to see - Duane Isham, a lawyer  - I can  no longer  cover for him. I had received the same text earlier in which he said, in part:

"When I said Scarborough was 'toast'  I was paraphrasing what local business leaders were telling me and what it seemed their feeling  was as  to whether it was too late for Scott Scarborough to turn the situation around and remain in the picture. I was not saying that the Board of Trustees or the Chair, John Pavlov (sic) had reached a decision that Scarborough had to go."

OK, he was quoting   some business leaders (who are quite active behind the scenes in this epic)   without saying so .And we all know that in common parlance, "toast" means that a person has no further hope for a  bright future. But in our conversation there was nothing to suggest that Isham was merely the conduit.

Chris Christie's wacko endorsement of Trump

By all accounts, the piecemeal Republican Party and ratings-driven media were stunned by Chris Christie's endorsement of Donald Trump. But I'm here to ask  what does it matter when one loser steps into the ring to support another loser?

Still,  when a phenomenon unfolds to elect the leader of the free world it is quite natural  in swampy. unnatural conditions to inquire  about motives and as the servant of Grumpy readers, I will dare to inquire on Oscar weekend

Christie descended into the muck and mire of Trump's x-rated bid to be exceptional  because...

(1) unlike Ohio's John Kasich,  the New Jersey governor's father was a spirited Ocean City surfer triumphantly riding the surging waves  and not a sidewalk-bound mailman.

(2) unlike Ted Cruz, his father washed dishes instead of  building kitchens  in five-star  hotels to provide  sub-minimum-wage jobs for Democrats.


(3) Trump promised to erect a new hermetically sealed Atlantic City boardwalk protected with a 50- foot wall from rising climate-changed  ocean levels  and require Delaware to pay for it.

(4) the bombastic billionaire would  rename  the historic elephant hotel in Margate City from Lucy to Christie  and provide it with slot machines that can  survive any rising coastal water.

(4) Trump would give  Christie a major share in the  traffic cone industry that  equipped him with instant iPhone control over blocking the road to the George Washington Bridge.

(5 or...as Lindsey Graham so despairingly put it,  Christie is simply as" batshit crazy"'  as    what's left of the Republican Party of Lincoln.

 Way to go Chris!  I must wonder whether you are really trying to assure yourself  of making the cut in the back-page footnotes of  this year's sloppy mud-deep march to the sea.

But Christie, now  the philosopher, may have been cryptically describing himself when he said of Rubio:   "Desperate people do desperate things."

Graham's numbing benediction on debate

The only sensible comment on the Republican presidential candidate debate in Houston arrived from Sen. Lindsey Graham, a former GOP candidate himself.  After witnessing the freak show on stage, Graham concluded:  "My party has gone batshit crazy."

Actually, the  Fab Fivers were  merely polishing their roles for  Saturday Night Live.   Have you ever...?

Scarborough departure in the works - finally

The vise on University of Akron president Scott Scarborough's tenure is closing.

"He's toast!", a reliable source close to the unraveling conditions at the downtown campus told me, adding that an exit strategy is the next step for the Board of Trustees in the wake of the recent  Faculty Senate no confidence resolution. He said the final chapter will take a little time to work out the details for the transition at the top.  But he assured me they will be worked out.

Speculation of a Scarborough departure grew as the trustees scheduled an executive session within two weeks of its last meeting  even though the  board customarily meets every two months. Also, the meeting sent the board to the DoubleTree in Fairlawn rather than the far more convenient Student Union on campus.  It was believed to have been moved  to avoid possible protestors who have been actively campaigning against the embattled president.

Board chair Jonathan Pavloff has-been quietly making the rounds of  business leaders for their assessment of UA's rocky future with Scarborough still on board and their verdict convinced him the  school couldn't labor on much longer with Scarborough in command.  

As late as midweek, a board staffer  was denying that the DoubleTree closed session was no more than a routine sit-down even though the elements didn't add up.   Oh?

My source, not given to exaggeration, unhesitantly  broke out the "toast" comment without mentioning Scarborough's name.  But his reference  couldn't be mistaken.

 .

Kasich advice on a diverted money stream

A wary glance  at the TV screen  yesterday reminded me once again that the only folks having any fun with the cyclonic disarray of the Republican candidates are Donald Trump and the cable news hosts. We no longer live in the era of talking heads.   They have morphed into maniacal heads with MSNBC's Chris Matthews leading the sky-is-falling pack.

When you have so many hours to fill in front of the camera, repetitious  broken breaking news serves the commercial interruptions very well to relieve the viewers of all of the deadly  things that can happen to you  if you choose a new drug without first talking to your doctor. (Some otherwise healthy people are known to become ill from simply hearing of the potential threats.)

But it  all adds up to a  sort of received wisdom that you can't buy in a bottle across the counter. For example,  we happened to see John Kasich shrugging off a reporter's question  about how he would deal with the other candidates.  No way,  he said, would he get involved in their campaigns.  He had his own campaign to run!

But as he was getting some free TV time, his campaign strategist  John Weaver  was releasing  a memo describing Marco Rubio's fund-raising as  wildly beyond the tether.

According to The Hill, the memo said:  "Contrary to what his campaign is trying to portray,  Senator Rubio just endures another disappointing performance [in Nevada].
 Republicans are now left to wonder whether investing in Marco Rubio is throwing good money after bad."

Clearly Kasich was out to discourage contributors from joining wallets in behalf of the Floridian. The Ohio governor  didn't want to be  the bottom-feeder in the race.  How could he be running his own campaign if his money - good or bad -   was diverted to Rubio?  How, indeed?

As we used to ask impatiently when my dad was driving the family south, "Are we in Florida yet?"  

Kasich Ohio's Man of LaMancha

Ever since John Kasich piled up a 60 pct. landslide victory over  Donald Trump  (3 votes to 2) in Dixville Notch, Coos County,  N. H. in the flagship round of the Republican primaries, there's been no dimming of  the Ohio governor's   moonbeams  in his good-will journey of boasts and  Bibles.

Moonbeams?  Even as  he finished dead last in Nevada and a new poll showed him behind Trump in Ohio,  his cup-bearers  have concocted a new commercial called "Never Give Up" to be aired in Vermont for Heaven's sake. It's heroic thematic line:  "Like the people who make America great, John Kasich never gives up".

How nostalgic for those who can still  hum "Moonlight in Vermont," don't you think?

The ad reviews his life of surviving adversity in a rusty  Pennsylvania steel town to losing parents in a car crash.  "He had faith to carry on."  It also reviews his good deeds as congressman to balance budgets.  Still his flagging campaign has produced Ohio's Man of LaMancha, tilting all windmills along the way with senior advisor John Weaver serving as his dutiful Sancho Panza.

"The best is yet to come," the ad tells us.  But with a guy like Kasich, it would be too much to expect a little sunlight to filter  through the boasts.  

The enigmas of Rob Portman

Aside to Rob Portman,  Ohio's tag-along Republican senator:

Dear Rob:  In your lame attempt to explain your opposition to President Obama nominating a successor to Antonin Scalia  you said:

"I believe the best thing for the country is to trust the American people to weigh in on who should make a lifetime appointment   that could reshape the Supreme Court for generations."

A majority of Americans  have already weighed in, twice, by electing Barack Obama.  It was in all of the papers.

Will UA play its ITT card?

Thursday's University of Akron Board of Trustees off-schedule  private meeting has led to further speculation by the school's many critics that it might show further  interest in buying into the online  for-profit  teaching company, ITT (for Technical institute).    There's been little question of President Scott Scarborough's obsessive interest in  privatizing whatever is within UA's grasp - and whatever isn't - to convert the school into a national power.

Trouble is, as he has set out to do  it, his woefully ill-managed thrust  has disrupted  the  university's basic academic mission to  send its graduates  into the world knowing a lot more than when they arrived.   The leadership's confidently expressed  game plan has shrunk faculty, depressed morale and created a national spectacle of a campus gone awry  The latest indictments,  of course, was both the 50-2 no confidence Faculty Senate resolution and a  painful peep from the once hospitable Beacon Journal that has called for his "transition" .

But the ITT enterprise would  draw more public attention to a  private national operation   that the U.S.  and Exchange Commission  has charged, along with two top-tier executives, with fraud in  dealings in two student loan programs.

Pop quiz:  Will the trustees ignore ITT's current legal problems just as they did in hiring Scarborough with his troubled academic career path?

Hold the applause for now, please.

UA Board schedules "routine" Thursday meeting at DoubleTree

With few details available, the embattled University of Akron Board of Trustees has scheduled a meeting at  3 p.m.  Thursday - two weeks after the board had met at its regularly scheduled meeting on Feb. 10.

The board normally convenes every two months in the Student Union.  When I asked a member of the board's staff about the schedule change  (it doesn't appear in the online schedule)  he  huffily responded that it was a purely routine meeting.

However,   some  critics of the. board and President Scott Scarborough  are speculating that the  board could be  moving on something far more consequential than routine business.

Will there be some form of action against Scarborough, who has suffered one defeat after another at the hands of the faculty academics?   The Senate Faculty recently passed a 50-2  no confidence resolution.

In response to my questions about the meeting, UA  spokesman Wayne Hill released a statement confirming the meeting, at the DoubleTree in Fairlawn,   adding that the Board's Finance & Administration committee will meet  "for the purpose of conducting an Executive (non-public)  Session...The committee meeting will be followed by a previously announced special meeting  of the Board for a dinner and information  session at 6 p.m."  Hill said "no formal actions will be taken".

There's been plenty of talk that Board chair Jonathan Pavloff has been meeting with a number of heavy hitters around town in the  wake of the waves of reaction against Scarborough's board-sanctioned rebranding and  other measures that passed  uninterrupted before their eyes.

oh?

After Kasich, we can again eat in

Ever  since John Kasich decided  that he'd rather be president than governor he's been delivering all of us decades into his past:  the blue-collar kid  from  Western Pennsylvania   whose father was a mailman;, the former chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee who singlehandedly (the way it sounds in his current speeches) balanced the federal budget; the former member of the Armed Services Committee who opposed the B-52 bomber:   the can-do politician who insists that he is "surging"  in the presidential race even when he's not.  In his long history in Ohio he's assured us that he can accomplish everything short of sending the Cleveland Browns to the Super Bowl

And now, he's  stepped into it when  he told a group of women in Virginia that  he won a  state senate seat 37 years ago at  age 26 when,  bless 'em, women left the kitchen to work for his campaign.

Pure macho surfaced again.   As the National Memo put it, that recounted  story of his youthful political vigor  "showed how culturally dated he can still be." (Did women dutifully return to their kitchens  after he was elected that year?)

Throughout his political  life, Kasich has been a Zelig figure.  You know, the Woody Allen fictional character who could evolve quickly from one identity to another as the situation required. He once was branded as a snappish, tough-talking being who showed no mercy to his rivals.  That was the residue of his earliest political existence as an aide to  Ohio State Sen. Donald "Buz" Lukens, who could  always widen the the goal  posts  to please an audience.  Lukens once explained to me that he could speak on  liberal college campuses because "I know how to fuzz it up a little."

Alas.  Lukens, a handsome lady's magnet from southwest Ohio   whose  conservative  style points eventually tumbled down in disgrace with his involvement with a woman too young to be involved.

Once in office, Kasich set out to be the arch conservative, with jobs as a Fox News  commentator, a crack at being district manager for a Wall Street company that failed  and a developing Good Humor man, macho or not, as a contrasting candidate to Donald
Trump et al.

But as we see from  his kitchen comment, John Kasich hasn't changed from his days  in another era.  He just heartily signed an anti-abortion bill passed by the legislative hoofbeaters in Columbus that  defunds Planned parenthood.  The talk, all along, was that  PP was selling fetuses, as " exposed " by a discredited video that an official probe ended with indictments of the film's two producers;   for Kasich and his cheering section, there will continue to be references to the PP's  "scandal", ignoring  the probe as non-productive to their fictions.

That parallels the fiction of  John Kasich, if you want to take the time to review of how, for his sake, he briefly liberated  women from their rightful place over the kitchen stove.

The lame post-Scalia hacks.

Did you ever think there were so many hacks and quacks among us from still-breathing Republican politicians to, say, Plain Dealer columnist Kevin O'Brien, who want to prevent President Obama from replacing the late Justice Antonin Scalia?

Claiming constitutional insights that escape many of us, they insist that a lame-duck president should not do what the U.S. Constitution requires him to do.  It's their tiresome assault on Obama from the first day he stepped into office 7.5 years ago.

Never mind.  It's a big leap  from  lame-duck Obama to the lame-brains on the right.  But a democracy guarantees rightists safe, if silly,  passage for it.

In politics, be aware of unthreatening threats

When I started clearing some of the clutter on my desk, I happened to find an old New York Times clipping from last September.  Its should be an alert to anyone who is unaware of the  ephemeral day-to-day existence of presidential politics.

The story began:

"The best way to see the threat that Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor,  poses to Jeb Bush in the Republican presidential race is to  look at Mr. Walker's donors"

It went on to  cite the big conservative donors, from casino giant Sheldon Adelson to Richard DeVos, the Amway co-founder , who were lined up behind Walker.

 Since the story of the GOP's two powerful contenders appeared, one a "threat"  to the other, Walker dropped out  and Jeb!,  staggering with no sign of equilibrium, cashed in his chips after another awful finish in the South Carolina primary.  (He did, however, finish ahead of Gov. Kasich.)

Oh, the headline above the article said: "To Grasp Walker's Power, Look at his Donors"

There are threats, and there are threats which I |never grasped.

* * * * *

Still riding a mythical high is Kasich's campaign. After finishing next to last in South  Carolina, even trailing Jeb!, the governor's campaign strategist, John Weaver, whipped out an upbeat press release declaring the GOP field to be a "Four-Person"  race, excluding only Carson.  Weaver said there was a good reason to validate Kasich as a candidate  because "only four candidates have top-three finishes in the early states (alas,  Kasich finished fifth last night) and he will now be campaigning in states that favor him. Kasich has boasted that he can land an airplane.  He had better do it quickly with much of his campaign cash left behind in New Hampshire.

* * * * *

P.S. I've never covered a race in which 2nd, 3rd and 4th place finishes are called victories. My older metrics are no longer of use.

Team Scarborough's war of attrition

It now seems certain that the Scarborough team at the University of Akron has settled on a war of attrition to outlast its critics.  No matter that  the latest reports from the front reveal a  university  president who has retreated from public dialogue.  We only know that Scott Scarborough has turned over the exposition  of the authorized script to trustee chair Jonathan Pavloff's  less than definitive utterances.

There's an irony here.  Although Scarborough once argued intensely that the school is setting out to acquire a national audience with its rebranding, UA is in fact achieving that goal,  not as a success story but rather as a school locked in it's own worst image in the national social  and academic media.

In a piece I just posted, Ellen Wexler of Inside Higher Education wrote of UA's current chaos with surgical precision. When I asked, she told me that she had attempted to talk to Scarborough but her request came  back with a statement from UA  vizir Larry Burns. No word from the ventriloquist.

I could also mention the board of trustees, a  UA auxiliary unit gifted  in doing what it's  told with full confidence that it  will remain in-sourced as Planet Scarborough reaches out for  further privatization. But don't get me started.

Akron, you have a problem.

The demoted establishment of Gov. Kasich

A few days ago, Gov. Kasich delivered another whopper to the swamp of this year's presidential  races. Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe", Ohio's contribution to demonic lore said in all seriousness but with his trademark smile that
"Guess what?  The establishment is afraid of me."

He even cited cyclical  history that the establishment  was afraid of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, for whatever value he perceived in being part of that mix. The mailman's son boasted that he doesn't take orders from anyone, which makes the well-heeled Big E "nervous".

Did he say establishment? So, to borrow one of his favorite rhetorical lead-ins,  Guess what?

The fearful establishment has fingerprints all over his campaign treasury as the biggest donors.  There's the Schottenstein Management Co., for example, the  company that once signed his paychecks, gave New Day for America,  Kasich's super PAC, $1 million, POLITICO reported.  AVI Foodsystems and Richard L.Bowen & Associates, each having had state contracts,  donated $100,000 each, POLITICO  said. And coal mine operator  Murray Energy gave $250,000.

There's more - a lot more  - L Brands, Crown Equipment Corp., and Worthington Industries came up significantly  from the big guys that   Kasich doesn't call the establishment. Worthington's  John P. McConnell and Peter Karmanos served on the board that once had a seat for Kasich  and each  chipped in at $500,000 to the super PAC.

Saving the best for last, POLITICO reported that Kasich's favorite initiative was the creation of JobsOhio, a private operation that replaced the state's development department.
The first president of JO was Mark Kvamme,  POLITICO noted.  He persuaded then Ohio State University  President E. Gordon Gee too invest $50 million of the school's money in Job/Ohio.   (Is anybody wondering how that money is doing today?)

Well, this is the tip of the Kasich dollar sign.   Not bad from  all of those nervous folks who no longer qualify as the establishment.  Did I say whopper?

Not a good day for UA

Is the University of Akron setting a new path for its controversial rebranding that includes  the tagline of  "Ohio's  Polytechnic University"?  That was at least suggested by Board of Trustees chair Jonathan Pavloff in a wide ranging interview in
the Buchtelite that will leave you still wondering where UA is going from here..

In a detailed Q&A, Pavloff, the sole authorized voice on the board where the other trustees are required to be seen but not heard,   cautiously responded    to a question by reporter Kristina Aiad-Toss   by conceding that the tagline  "may not work",  adding the leadership  did a bad job defining it.

The rebranders were so proud of their  dash into the future that the new tagline quickly appeared on T-shirts, printed materials and, for all that I know, President Scott Scarborough's bagel napkins  at Panera's .

Other takeaways from the interview:  The board speaks as a  single voice; he has no reaction to the  Beacon Journal's call for Scarborough to be "transitioned" (fired or forced to resign); questions about reducing tenured faculty exist on every campus; he can only  offer official measured neutrality on whether Scarborough is a good fit other than to say the board supports the decision that's made "collectively".   And on and on with few specifics on dealing with the campus chaos that has led me to suggest replacing polytechnic with "Ohio's pyrotechnic university.".

The interview is on line.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, you might want to read another reflection of the school's problems  in an online piece headed "University of Akron struggling regional, hopes to expand worldwide."

It's written by Ellen Wexler for Inside Higher Education.   Although she quoted Scarborough's speech to the university in October in which he talked of his vision of a university with world-wide notice,  she observed that he has "done little to elaborate on his plans" other than to say that the school is working with outside companies.

Such secrecy is another example of privatizing and wearing  the corporate cloak of business as usual. First you must privatize, then vaporize  from public view to protect all parties.

Clearly, the UA brass is eager to outsource with national entities offering online education to the students.  It's a growing medium these days and does have some benefits for schools with heavy debt.  But there is a downside to directing kids away from live teachers. As one who has taken numerous DVD courses from Great Courses, I have done so because the half-hour  lectures are superbly taught in any course you might choose.

But there are moments when the professor has referred to something in the materials (which come with a manual in 24 to 36 lectures) when I would like to raise my hand about a point that needed more clarity for me.  Online, you can't do that.

Summing up the travail at UA, Wexler writes:

"Outsourcing isn't uncommon.  But on top of the general turmoil at the university, there is the fear that core university functions will be outsourced to for-profit companies without input from the community.  One of Scarborough's first changes was too outsource dining, a common move at many colleges.  But then he began outsourcing other functions, like freshman advising.  And now, faculty members  are worried  sbout being  thrust into a nationwide for-profit partnership."

They are on to something that has no use for ivy covered walls.

There was a time when you could buy  modest house plans from a Sears catalog.  I have a crazy feeling that there's where outsourced college education is heading.  And Scarborough, who has left other campuses under a cloud, is just the guy to do that.

May some theories rest in conspiratorial peace

You can forever count on a group of frowning Americans who love conspiracy theories.  Back in 1993, its was the suicide of  White House deputy counsel Vince Foster, a victim of depression, that led some misguided   theorists to the doorstep of Hillary Clinton as the perp when Bill was president. Some of the talk even reached the Summit County  Republican high command.

And what of all of the books and articles by those theorists who believed that there was much more to John Kennedy's assassination than the mainstream press would ever dare  tell you?  I got it from one of these  birds first hand in a guarded interview with a national doubter  in a Columbus hotel room.

Elvis Presley?  Dead at only 42. Was it really a cover-up of his drug addiction when an autopsy strongly  suggested that he died of  constipation.

And now we must deal with the conspiracists in the wake Antonin Scalia's demise in the utter privacy of a   Texas ranch.  If Barack Obama's fingerprints were not all over the justice's passing, then surely Hillary had provided  the poison. No autopsy?   Well, now.

  Is he really dead?  Careful, there.  After it was widely reported that Ernest Hemingway had died in a small-plane crash in Uganda,  Time magazine told us that the macho author popped out of the jungle with a "bunch of bananas and a bottle of gin." Way to go,  Papa!

Theorize how that was possible,  theorists of the world!

The Republicans of Abbott and Costello routine

HACKDOM, n, --- A maddening  collection of semi-adult hacks driven by two humiliating defeats by an African American;  a disturbed kingdom without a king; a group of banshee-like doomsayers who never find time to go to the bathroom;  a wailing  herd of Mitch McConnells with open mikes on TV.

Take your choice, readers.  The noise of revisionist history is getting to me as constitutional hacks invent the ghost stories in the troubled wake of Antonin Scalia.

You've heard it all by now.  The fanciful repetition of denials that Barack Obama, the fully constituted elected president of the United States, is allowed to nominate a Scalia successor in the last year of office.

Don't get me wrong.  I am not a  constitutional scholar.  I only know what the legal experts -  not the hacks -  are telling me.  Obama can, and will,  with the sacred U.S. Constitution  secured in his breast pocket.

For now, I should only remind you in an election year that our Gov. Kasich and our tag-along  U.S. Sen. Portman are dismissing the experts' full understanding of the issue while insisting that a lame-duck black president should shut up and go to his room.

 Labeling himself  as a  "commonsense conservative fighting for Ohio, "  Portman asks us to  descend more deeply with him into hackdom as  an ill-chosen convenience to appeal to his so-called base.

Base?  It's  getting so these days that the word  gives us a new sense of  confusion   derived    from the old Abbott and Costello  skit when a frantic Lou didn't have a clue to what Bud was talking about regarding the phantom base runners.

Sorry, folks.  But when these hacks are bitching about a mysterious nominee whose image can't  even show up on an Etch-A-Sketch pad,   the Abbott and Costello routine is the clearest signal so far  that commonsense is hardly in play in the kingdom of Hackdom.

Dick Celeste: The true happy warrior

Dick Celeste, the former Ohio governor, breezed into his home state for a few days last week with an itinerary that included endorsing  Democratic Senate  candidate P.G. Sittenfeld.   That bit of political business aside, he called me for a friendly  chat while riding to Cleveland from Columbus.

At 78, he's still engaged in several missions after his nine-year presidency at  Colorado College that ended in 2011. Earlier,  he had been a two-term governor, Peace Corps director, ambassador to India.  (I may have missed six or seven along the way. )

Forever accessible in office as a casual upbeat guy with a broad smile,  wit, and overwhelming formal intelligence, Celeste is now busy in a project to lure the Winter Olympics to Colorado.  "We've raised $50 million of our $80 million goal,"  he says with his always present optimism. With his tireless presence on the team,  I figure they'll reach the goal.

He's also working on  his memoirs that could fill several books  for  his path of successes.  Joe  Hallett, the widely respected Columbus Dispatch political columnist, now retired,  once wrote of Celeste that the Cleveland-born, Yale-educated Rhodes scholar  was "one of the most-accomplished and consequential Ohioans of the past half century".  As one whose job was sustained coverage of Celeste, often like catching a whirlwind, I can easily agree.

Our brief conversation a few days ago, no more than several minutes long, reminded me of how the  state let a person of enormous ability get away. As the University of Akron's troubles continue to grow, I can only speculate how it might have had a happier narrative if the school's managers had somehow convinced him to take the job  back when presidencies  lasted a lot longer than they do now.   He had been a finalist for the president's office at Case Western Reserve in 2002, but the story at the time was that a person with designs on the  job in the Oval Office might just stay a few years before returning  to the political arena.

So he's back in Colorado Springs.   Meantime,  any other highly qualified academic whiz who might have a taste for the top job of a public university as  a Democrat would have a tough time getting past the boards burdened across the state with Republicans.

The University of Akron is no exception.  It's been rebranded with a new name, so to speak, with a president safely sheltered in the mix.  But with so many sparks flying on the  downtown campus today, wouldn't it have been more appropriate  to label UA as "Ohio's Pyrotechnic University" instead of the current techie one?

Sorry, the Celeste Effect is that after a few moments on the phone with him, we are left with regressing into what might been.


.

Time for Scarborough to break the silence

Memo to President Scott  Scarborough, University of Akron:

You are the CEO of a public university.  Or at least it was the last time I checked.   That being the case,  your salary plus other overhead items are paid by the public.

Aren't you obligated to respond  directly to the taxpayers about your plans during this period of  great campus stress instead of turning everything over to the head of the Board of Trustees? A lot of people around town are talking, particularly since the daily newspaper has now called for your "transition".  Shouldn't  you be talking, too?

I'm told your faculty critics will publish an unanswered letter to the board to break the silence.

Your turn.

A routine day on the election front

Within microseconds of the report that Justice Antonin Scalia had died you could hear crackling bursts of jerking knees from the six dwarfs  vying for the Republican presidential ring.  Each tried to engage the hyper-conservative South Carolina audience with a brief, hastily gathered tribute to the fallen justice, mostly repeating the others' mournful words as respectful American mortals  grasping  the coattails of one of their earlier heroes,  Ronald Reagan.    But it hardly rose to the classic poetry  of Mark  Antony's paean to Julius Caesar in an appeal for a loan of Roman ears.

Indeed, from that impromptu  point on, the debate stopped just short of fisticuffs in which there were few moments  when somebody wasn't making a damn fool of himself.  As such, it was hard to  shift the harsh story line to the paid commercials in which a constipation cure interrupted the breakdown of sanity. (When I hear some of these guys, I recall the warning of Adlai Stevenson: "In America, anybody can become president.  That's one of the risks you take.")

Ohio's Gov.Kasich, who  is craving to be the newly honed adult in the GOP platoon,  gasped with  a pained smile:  "I gotta tell you.  This is just crazy, huh?  This is just nuts, OK?  Jeez. Oh, man." But even he fell into lockstep  with the  script that President Obama should not, for God's sake, nominate a successor to Scalia.  Cruz later said he would "absolutely" filibuster any move in that direction by the president  Obama. "

Here we go again.

None of this would qualify as anything but one more stonewall that has been raised by Obama's Republican enemies since he entered  office more than seven years ago.   But it will rise well above an annoyance  in the coming months with the contenders on the right  continuing to kick up rocks and mortar to strip a twice elected president of his constitutional right.

The Senate races, including the one in  Ohio, have risen to towering importance for the Democrats;  The country has too many enemies around the world to have to put up with this ad hoc batch of white collar Republicans.

Oh, a couple of takeaways:  Rubio asserted  Bush "kept America safe."  The night before, Ana Navarro, a CNN contributor and Jeb! supporter, became angry on the Bill Maher show when Dubya  was criticized by some others for the high human cost of the Iraq war.  Her defense:  George had been quite helpful in providing for the returning wounded veterans.

Please.

A second strike against the governor

It's not unusual for good news in political life to be  quickly followed by bad  news. Gov.  Kasich's rise to second (!) place in New Hampshire earned him celebrity status in the national media and the Republican establishment frantically groping for   an escape from  their captivity by billionaire demagogue Donald Trump.

On that score, Kasich's shifty stance on many issues  in which he avoided menacing talk with a fixed smile  worked in his favor.  But it comes at the price of closer media attention, at least until  somebody  more palatable can be found on the practice squad.

So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the Washington Post burst out of the soundproof media  box with a strong accounting of the  education "mess" in  Ohio on the governor's watch.  It included a dissenting voice on the management of charter schools that Kasich  is fondly supporting.

That was the first volley.  Today, 24 hours later,  the often-friendly Plain Dealer recalled Kasich's viperish description of a  cop that stopped his car as an "idiot".  It said the "ill-advised" comment is now going viral on social media.  The impetus for the revived story is coming from police organizations even though it happened in 201l.

 That incident  has then reminded everyone that Kasich had just taken office and was in a snappish mood  about anything that he didn't like. - including public unions.  His unpopular support of union restrictions landed on the state ballot  and was crushed.

He's tried to overhaul his bullish  behavior for his presidential run.   But things have a way of catching up.  As Oscar Wilde once wrote:

"No man is  rich enough to buy back his past."

ABJ: Time for a UA transition

Friday morning, Beacon Journal readers will find an editorial suggesting that beleaguered University of Akron President Scott Scarborough ought to be replaced.

With its patience running out about the turmoil on the campus, the paper declared:

"The expectation was, the president eventually would rise to the full job.  Unfortunately, that is getting harder to see.  The trustees must begin to think hard about a transition.  The university is too important to the city and region."

Kasich school system gets an 'F' from Washington Post

it didn't take   long for Gov. Kasich's free ride as a presidential wannabe to get stomped by a national newspaper. As  we have recently pointed out, the national media, from the New York Times to MSNBC, were so taken by his alleged moderate conservatism that they hopped on his bandwagon and said some nice things about his  right- of-center  confections without checking out his record back in Ohio.

The Washington Post stepped up with some of it own background research and concluded the  issues confronting Ohio public education added up to a "mess".

The bedsheet list included a "scandal-ridden charter school sector" while public schools suffered cuts in the state budget as Kasich pushed, and won, increased funding for the charters. And then there was David Hansen, the state charters boss, who resigned after it was discovered that he was cooking low charter scores to make them look better.   (Hansen's wife, Beth,  is Kasich's campaign manager.)  There are other blots on his school records,  the Post reported, from   controversial state takeover of failing schools  to  a "questionable teachers evaluation system."

Now that Kasich is claiming celebrity status on the national circuit, the cork is out of the bottle.  It's better late than never.

A wakeup call to UA Board of Trustees

A letter to University of Akron Board of Trustees from Louise Harvey, president of the UA Women's Committee

As a 10-year UA retiree and a native Akronite, I have watched and listened to the horror stories from within The University of Akron.  PLEASE stop listening to Scott Scarborough and his team with their  prepared narratives of explanation.  Talk to the faculty, staff and students who are dealing with the ramifications of poorly planned and questionable changes and are demoralized as they watch one person "destroy a great university."  Those are the words of a highly respected, long-time faculty member/administrator.  Inability to accept change is not the issue.  Universities change constantly. Ask anyone who has worked under more than one president.  It is the manner in which the changes have been implemented without regard to the effect on students or faculty and often with total disregard for the human factor. 

I just read the official BOT response to the vote of no confidence and to the letter from the school directors and department chairs. It is a canned response, and I can only hope that it is your cover for behind the scenes negotiations.  You have run a company or organization, and you surely know that without the support of your employees or constituents, you will not succeed.

Scott Scarborough has demonstrated many times over that he does not want to listen or work collaboratively with any constituent group. It is not the "others" who will not work with him.  Scott Scarborough has lost his credibility and respect on almost all fronts.  Once lost, regaining one's credibility is long road.  Is that not one reason that you rejected Jim Tressel's bid for president?

You are facing a decline in students, a decline in contributions, and very soon the loss of many of your most talented and effective faculty members and administrators.  It will be very difficult to attract good people in all those constituent groups as the reputation of the University diminishes.   

The resolution is simple:  tell Scott Scarborough that he is not a good fit for The University of Akron and allow everyone to move on before the university is destroyed for good.  If the univerfsity is destroyed,  you will be known as a member of the Board of Trustees that killed a fine institution just to avoid admitting you have made a significant mistake in your choice of a president and refused to listen to the voices of many who have tried to explain their concerns.  

Respectfully, 

--

 Louise M. Harvey

It's not a halo, folks

Half a look at Kasich

On the morning-after of the New Hampshire primary the CNN website  bore a commanding headline that asked:  "Who is John Kasich?"

Funny that a world news organization would  now ask.

For many tortured months the media merely tracked polling numbers while finally coming around to CNN's provocative question. Meanwhile, the mainstream media ,  reduced to tricklestream  reports these days, seemed fascinated by the rise and fall of candidates: Ted  Cruz was beginning to soar before he stopped  riding to the hounds.  Marco Rubio was the latest fantasy of the gurus before his glow was dimmed in the snows of New Hampshire. And Donald Trump lost momentum in Iowa that he regained in the Granite State.  Most were sound bites captured as "breaking news" .

And now, we are left with CNN taking notice of Gov. Kasich, whose campaign spent more than $11 million in the tiny state while he demonically visited 106 town  hall meetings to convince voters that being the nice-guy  son of a  mailman is all that it takes to win an election.

Actually, as well as we must know, he took a victory lap while finishing second, 19 points behind Donald trump. At that, he went to his spirited crowd Tuesday night with the self-satisfied demeanor of someone arriving  at the pearly gates. What we did hear about his soul was quoted by a New Yorker writer last November:  "We need to live a life bigger than ourselves,  life is not just about me, me, me, me, me"  adding that he gives grace every day.

Not much help.

The late Jack Knight, my former boss, used to complain about the superficiality of some  political gurus who look at campaigns as little more than fodder  for picking a winner at the track   It's  worse today with, say, the  instant buffoonery of Chris  Matthews,  breathlessly spraying us with words like "I like Kasich" without saying why.

Those who know him best in Ohio wonder why he isn't asked about by his support of restrictions on public employee unions - a notion that was trounced by a million votes on the ballot.  Or   by his  pledge to defund Planned Parenthood "like crazy."     Or maybe why he'd opposed the stimulus and auto bailout  while denying  they did much good.

Let him enjoy his bizarre victory lap  after losing  to Trump by 19 real points in New Hampshire.    Shouldn't the tricklestream media get around to telling him that "Guv,  it's  really about you, you, you, you. you."?